Fritz Brandtner was born in the former German town of Gdańsk (now in Poland). In World War I he fought for the German Army, but spent most of his time in captivity as a POW in France. He then studied commercial art in Gdańsk, and was influenced by the great German expressionists and became a painter, draftsman, muralist and teacher. He immigrated to Canada in 1928, settling in Winnipeg, and then tried to introduce this style to Canada, eventually succeeding in Montréal, where he had settled in 1934. Already in Gdańsk he had been teaching and continued this activity after the war at Canadian schools and universities. He won the Canadian preliminaries for the art competition with the oil painting “Breaking Away”, showing an ice hockey scene. The painting is shown in the 1948 art catalog.
Canada